Monday, October 03, 2005

Pope Declares Campbellites "Evangelical"

A longstanding controversy was settled this evening as Evangelical Pope Dr. James Dobson spoke authoritatively on the subject.

Speaking ex cathedra (i.e., on the radio, the sacred and authoritative chair of the Evangelical Pope) in an interview with blogdaddy Hugh Hewitt, the Bishop of All Evangelicalism declared that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is a member of an "evangelical church." Ms. Miers, as noted previously by SWNID, is a member of the Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, Texas, and is therefore a Campbellite.

So the longstanding controversy, concerning which SWNID has contributed an article in the definitive book on the subject, is now settled. Sorry, all you heirs of Dean Walker's legacy at Milligan College and Emmanuel School of Religion. Looks like we're evangelicals whether we like it or not.

SWNID confesses that he agrees entirely with Pope Dobson's pronouncement and notes that Dobson in this instance uses the term "evangelical" in its most common and straightforward way: to refer to churches and Christians who believe whatever they find the Bible to teach, who teach that personal faith in Jesus is the condition of salvation, and who don't seek to withdraw from the "world" on the basis of culturally relative issues (differentiating evangelical from fundamentalists, who do withdraw on such issues).

SWNID just wishes that Dr. Dobson would stick to matters like this, and leave issues like Bible translation to people who actually know something about it, like, of course, SWNID.

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